As we went through in the book of Mark chapter 1 this morning, the temptation or the baptism of Christ, Mark does not say much about the temptation of Christ. It's really short, actually. And if you begin and look at this, the baptism of Christ there in the book of Mark, beginning in verse 12, it says, after Christ came up out of the water, And this voice came from heaven there in verse one. Well, let me begin verse 10. It says, in a straight way, coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens open, John saw this, and the spirit, like a dove, descending upon him, upon Christ. And there came a voice from heaven saying, thou art my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. And immediately the spirit drove him into the wilderness. And he was there in the wilderness 40 days tempted of Satan and was with the wild beast and the angels ministered unto him. Well, if you go to the book of Matthew, in Matthew chapter 3, it explains it. Matthew goes into greater detail than John or than Mark, excuse me, about the temptation of Christ. In Matthew chapter 4, if you go there and you look, And I just want to read the first couple of verses there as Jesus, but this baptism of Christ here, immediately after this baptism, it says in Matthew 4, 1, it says, then was Jesus led up out of the, or led up of the spirit. So you see that the difference in the wording there, Mark and Matthew, Matthew says he was led by the spirit or led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, he was afterward hungry. And when the tempter came to him, Satan is who the tempter is, the evil one. And if thou be the son of God, Command that these stones be made bread. And he answered and said, it is written. Jesus is the one that answered, Satan. It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God. Now, if you look at the book of Luke, these temptations, the first two temptations are in reverse order. But Matthew began with the bread, the hunger. But notice what Jesus did, and we all understand this, but that by the word of God, he overcome Satan. Verse 5 says, then the devil, see the devil didn't give up with one temptation. He said, the devil taketh him up in the holy city, or into the holy city, and sitteth him on the pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him, if thou be the son of God, cast thyself down, for it is written, he shall give his angels charge concerning thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thy dash thy foot against a stone. And verse seven says, then Jesus said unto him, it is written, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Again the devil taketh him up, the third temptation here, into an exceedingly high mountain and showeth him all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them and said unto him, all these things will I give unto thee if thou will fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said unto him, get thee hence, Satan, for it is written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil left him, or leaveth him, and behold, angels came and ministered unto him. Now, there are several important things about this, and one of the things that's very important is this as a time right after the baptism when he was baptized, which began his ministry here on earth. Now actually, you could say it began earlier, but most people agree that it has begun here at this baptism when the father declared from heaven, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. But reading behind a converted Jew, His name is Albert Edersheim, a converted Jew. Here's what he said. He said, here at these waters was the kingdom into which Jesus had entered into the fulfillment of all righteousness. So Jesus here, he says, fulfilled all righteousness at this time of the baptism. It says, and from then on, he emerged as heaven's design He emerged as he was heaven-designed, heaven-qualified, and heaven-proclaimed king. And certainly we see that in Christ. Here he is. He's the one that the Father in the Godhead was determined before the world began that he would come and rescue us. and that at one point he must be declared the Messiah. See, he couldn't just go into this ministry without this declaration of the Father. It was very important here that he was declared that. And if you go into John chapter 14, here's what it says, what Jesus said himself when the disciples began to question and could not understand some of the things that Jesus had told them. And a lot they didn't understand until Jesus ascended back into heaven. But here's what Jesus said. He said, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life, and no man cometh unto the Father but by me. So we understand that here. It's been taught to us well, most of us all of our lives, or many of us all of our lives. But here he was. He was the king of the Jews. The king and all the hope that we have is dependent upon him. It's dependent upon Christ. But see, this was not the Messiah that the Jews were looking for. They were looking for this Messiah to come and rule and reign. and to deliver them from the Romans and from the Gentile rule is what they desired. It had even been written in their commentary, the Talmud, by misinterpretation of the scripture that this was what they believed was going to happen, that he was going to rule from the pinnacle of the temple. He was going to rule the world and be a world ruler. So you can understand why when it come to the gospel and when it came to his teaching and his preaching that the Jews hated him because they could not grasp the fact of accepting him as the Messiah. Not only that fact, but he came from Nazareth and they believed nothing good could come from Nazareth. But Jesus did and he was the Messiah. So we have to understand the environment of where it was. But you also see, if you'll turn to Psalms 22, and I want to read part of that Psalms this afternoon. And in Psalms 22, we see about the heathen, but we see about this Christ, who he is. And Psalms tells a lot about Christ. The whole Bible does, but the Psalms especially, Psalms 22. And actually, it's Psalms 2, excuse me, not 22. Psalms 2. I think it's good that we have to turn in our Bibles. It's a little bit better than on the screen sometimes, even though the screen is nice. But Psalms 2 says, one of the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing. In other words, this vain thing with the heathen is they can overcome God and they can throw out God. Now, if we ever live in a time that we've seen that in our country, we see it now. But they imagine this vain thing, this emptiness. The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel against the Lord, Jehovah, and against his anointed, saying, the anointed is Christ. Let us break their bonds asunder and cast away their cords from us. He that sit us in the heavens shall laugh. See, the one sitting on the throne, Christ, is going to laugh at their evilness and their evil ways. The Lord shall have them in derision, and then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them with sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my hill of Zion. The king is Christ. So here it is. This king and the kingdom is Christ. He said upon this holy hill, the church Zion. And I will declare the decree. The Lord has said unto me, thou art my son. This day have I begotten thee. Ask of me and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance. and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron. Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Be wise now, therefore, O you kings. Be instructed, you judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the sun, lest he be angry. and you perish from your way when his wrath is kindled, but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him. So we see there this king, he's sitting on the throne in heaven and he's going to laugh. He's laughing now at evil men and the evil things that they do, but his king, he said in verse six, is set upon his holy hill, not on man's holy hill, It's not the works of man, but it's the work of Almighty God, and it's predestined. You cannot change this. The book of Psalms was written way in advance of the book of Matthew. When you look at these things and you look at the things here that you see, that he said, the wicked men have no place in this life when it comes to God except by the will of God. Now, at this point in Israel, before Matthew chapter four, the things that had happened, and I said it this morning, is prophecy had ceased. There was no word from the prophets. Matter of fact, if you go back and if you have an apocrypha and you go back and you look, there was 400 years there of confusion. And in this confusion, the Jewish, the Pharisees and the Jewish writers and the scribes who were the lawyers, They had turned the Jewish religion, plus the Romans coming in and Herod, the Jewish king, had turned the Jewish faith into something that was not what God ever intended it to be. It was terrible. It was a terrible time in the nation. Matter of fact, James Snowden wrote about that. He wrote about the fact of this the exact time, that it was God's exact timing. Somebody asked the question, why did God wait so late in the history of man before he sent the Messiah, before he sent Jesus Christ the Messiah? Because it was in his timing, it was the exact time for the relief of man. But that tells us as Christians that we need relief. We have to have it from our Savior before We can be what the Lord's designed for us to be. The sad thing is that many men, and we all know men this way, that reject Christ. Edersheim said this, that the Jews believed that the placing of the Messiah on the pinnacle of the temple was so far from the satanic temptation. In other words, They didn't believe. They believed the Messiah was going to be this earthly ruler, that he could not be tempted of Satan. That's what the Jews believed. Well, it was false. And the teachings that they had were false because of that. So here's what you see. We see it right here, the very first thing. Now, it's amazing that the devil never appeared until the point after the baptism and Christ was declared the son of God. All of a sudden, here's Satan. There's a man that I know that is in his 40s and was saved a year or so ago, and it's like he never had any problem in his life until he was saved. Once the Lord saved him, all of a sudden, things began to hit him. physically and financially. See, whenever the Lord saves us, we're going to go through temptation. We're going to go through suffering here in this world. And you can see it here in the life of Christ. From this point on, nothing that we can even imagine happening to us happened to Christ. The temptations did not stop. Matter of fact, if you go on, not just the ones that we read, but if you go on at one point, The disciples told Christ that people are waiting on you. You need to go. And Jesus did not go. See, he was tempted by even his own disciples and people everywhere. He was tempted by the Pharisees, by all the Jews, and the things that he went through there. He was tempted of them. But see, here's the thing that we must beware of ourselves, because he's our enemy. He's our greatest enemy, and he will do anything he can to destroy you. And I've heard this said many times, but we need to beware of Christians is that we don't need to go into the devil's den. And I heard a guy say that, I heard a preacher say that one time that was a very good friend of mine. One of the things that he said was, is that we cannot go into the bars and expect to stay, to say, excuse me, to stay righteous without sin. You cannot go into that temptation. You cannot listen to the same old music. I'll tell you, we turn the radio on sometimes, most of the time when we leave, so somebody will think we're there anyway. And it's terrible. If you listen to B-95, we don't listen to it. We turn it off as soon as we can get in the house to turn it off. The music is so horrible. I don't even call it music. I don't know what that stuff is. It's a shame. But see, listening just to the music and the things of the music, it's evil. So as Christians, we have to be aware of those things. This is why it's so important that we study the word of God and understand it. Try to understand it. And when we get into the temptations here in just a minute, which we may not have time tonight, but one thing that you understand about this is a lot of people write about these things. There's a lot of fallacy out there also. One of the fallacies that I read that James Snowden put in his book was the fact that there's a lot of people back even probably now that believe that this was just a fable, not true, that Christ really didn't exist. Now think about that, that people can actually say that. As many people that saw him and what the Bible tells us, and the Bible's written in a way that I've thought about this before, there's no way a man could have ever written this. There's no man intelligent enough to have written this except he's inspired by the Holy Spirit, inspired by the Spirit of God. And men can say those things. Here's the other thing that you hear said about this, is there's no way that Christ could have fasted 40 days and 40 nights and live. There's no way that he could have been on the pinnacle of the temple and saw all the things that the Bible says that he saw. There's no way that he could have been on this high mountain and saw the whole kingdoms of all the earth. That's what men say. It's fallacy, they say. But we understand that it's absolute truth that Christ did the things. We don't know how that it was done, but we know that it's true. This was a real devil. We cannot deny that in our own life because he loves it if people that deny that he exists. Because if you deny he exists, then he can control you really easy. And he controls us in many ways. He controls us not only through the things that we see here on earth, but he controls us through the very things that we think. We have to be careful of things that we think. And the things that you see in all this, and you go back and you look at the very beginning of the book of Mark and you look at the beginning of the gospels, the things that you see in this is that there are so many things there And all these things you cannot explain. They're unexplainable except the fact that we serve this God who was King, he was incarnate, he was God in the flesh, he was 100% God and he was 100% man. That's the only way that you can explain it. It's supernatural. Everything that happens in these temptations is supernatural. You cannot say it's fallacy. It was of God. And it was of God, you can see there from the very beginning in the very first one there in Matthew 4, very first verse. He was led up by the Spirit. Now that tells me he was led by the Spirit. So the Spirit lays on men's heart the things to do. Whether it's to teach, to preach, to raise our children, how we live in our community, how we speak to our neighbors, those things he lays on our heart and we pray that. Hopefully you pray that, Lord, when I come up on this temptation of the devil or either when I come to this man that's lost, that you give me the words to say to him, give me your words so that I can share with him this great gospel. See, that's what we should be praying is that. But here's what you see, he was led up by the Spirit. In other words, he was not forced. It kind of sounds that way in the book of Mark, but here in the book of Matthew, you see that very clear. He was led by the Spirit. Christ was determined, as I said this morning, to do the will of the Father, even being led into temptation of the devil at a time that any of us would hate that we had to go through, even though we go through temptation, not like Christ did. But yet in these three temptations, even though there's more temptations than this, these three temptations here, we are tempted in the same ways. One of the things that I have to think about as we pray for Mexico just a minute ago in this first temptation of Christ and the things that you see is that we're so blessed to have the food that we have in this country. And a lot of people take that food and do terrible things with it. But we're blessed. You know, we feel like a lot of times, most of the time, and I'm a good example of this, being overweight, is that we feel like, well, we eat breakfast, and I feel like I need a snack before lunch, you know, about 10 o'clock. And then we eat lunch, and then I feel like I need another snack about 3 o'clock. And then we eat supper. And then I feel like I need another snack before I go to bed. And we're all laughing, but that's true. Bluebell has set up some of that in our lives and caused some of that. But we do feel that way. But I never will forget the missionary. The first time we went to Mexico, and Bob Davidson was kind of the leader in that. But the missionary, his name was Sammy, and I cannot remember Sammy's last name, but he was a missionary there, and he said, these people feel like they're blessed if they get one meal a day. But you didn't see, you don't see any fat people down there. Very seldom do you see a fat person because here's what they drink. I'll never forget, we had all kind of diet, every kind of drink, and Cokes, and everything else in these big buckets of ice. And when the Mexicans would come through, they always fed us the last night there. And when the Mexicans would come through, you could offer them any kind of drink in the world, but they wanted water. They wanted agua, water. That's what they wanted because that was what they were used to drinking. But here, you know, you have to kind of force yourself to drink water all the time. Now, if you're thirsty, that's different, but you sit down to meal, most of the time we want something other than water, even though most of the time for our health, we drink water. But Christ was tempted 40 days without food, without water. An impossible thing, many people say, but this was Christ and this was what the Bible tells us, so we take it by faith and we know that this actually happened. But notice that the devil came at that very minute after he, when the devil was watching and he realized that Christ was hungry, but he came to tempt him. And notice that he only tempts him with earthly things here. He said, Turn these stones into bread. Turn these stones into what you need. And he said, you can command these stones. So he's putting this stuff into the mind of Christ. But if you notice, Satan tempts us mentally, but he cannot tempt Christ mentally because he's full of the word of God and he's full of the Holy Spirit. He said, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God. Now this comes out of Deuteronomy chapter eight. We'll turn there in just a minute and read that. But we have to be aware of these temptations. And if we don't have the word of God and we don't understand where Satan comes from, say he comes to us at a time when we're weak. Now, think about this. Think about some times of weakness in our lives. See, he's going to put things in our life that tempt us, even if it's just food. And obviously, he's tempted me quite a bit with food. Many of us he has. Many people, a guy that I know was very heavy and his wife put him on a diet. And this shows you the defiance of us and our rebellion even against our own spouses when our spouses know what's right for us. What he would do is he worked quite a distance from his home, and on his way home he would go by McDonald's or Burger King and he would get him a a big meal, and he would eat that on the way home. Well, when he got home, his wife would have a low-calorie diet or a low-fat diet, whatever they were on, and he would eat that also. And she couldn't understand why he never lost weight. Well, he eventually died of a heart attack because he was so overweight. He woke up one morning and couldn't breathe, and he died of a heart attack. Well, see, we're tempted. by this food. I mean, yesterday was a good example for me anyway, because we had the baby shower at 10 o'clock and you know how baby showers are, they got all kind of sweets and you can't resist the stuff. Well, then we go out to the carpenters and they've got cookies. I don't think it tempted me as much as it tempted George, but Anyway, the cookies that they had. So I told Vonda when we got home, I felt like a balloon. I felt like I was just swelled up after eating all those sweets, because we usually don't eat many sweets. Even though I love them, we don't eat them that much. But see, the temptation may not be anything more than that. It may not be any more than food, and it may be something worse than that. It's like we heard the other day, A guy that we know that his children found in his room, a man who's supposed to be a man of God, found in his room hidden bottles of alcohol. His young children found that. What a horrible influence. Hopefully that's not any of us, even though my, and I have a granddaughter that's, that, is involved in some of that. And I told her one day, her and her husband, I said, you don't understand, the Parker family's been plagued with alcoholism, and it will destroy your life, and it will. Temptation, though, it may not be bread, But the thing about this is, it's the bread of life that Jesus said here, we should be dependent on every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Now we have to look at this, but his Satan's, and as you look at this, you understand that Satan is limited by Christ and he's limited by God. But look at Deuteronomy chapter eight and there's. Most of these temptations, a lot of the things that the scripture that Christ uses comes out of Deuteronomy chapter 8. And I said this this morning, the gospels, when these guys preached, the apostles preached, and the evangelists in the early churches preached, they preached out of the Old Testament because they didn't have the New Testament. So we see this. If you look at Deuteronomy chapter 8, you'll see this in verse 3, but I want to begin in verse 1. Deuteronomy chapter 8 says, all the commandments which I command thee this day shall you observe to do that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore unto your fathers. So he's talking to Israel here and he's talking to Moses. And thou shalt remember all the way that the Lord thy God led thee these 40 years in the wilderness to humble thee and to prove thee and to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments or no. And he humbled thee and suffered thee to hunger and fed thee with manna which thou knowest not or which thou did not know, neither did thy fathers know, that he might make thee known that men or that man does not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord. Doth man live? Man cannot live, he's saying, without the word of God. See, we can live But we cannot live the way God intends it. And that's what he said, if you keep my commandments. And he questioned here, there's a question here, are they going to keep my commandments or no? There in verse two. Well, if you look at us, we know that we struggle with sin. Every day we struggle with it. And we know that we're tempted. in every way, just like Christ was. Even not, but not like Christ. We're not tempted, but even though, but now here's the thing that's very important to understand, too, about these temptations. The first is, Adam and Eve, and I said this the other, I think last Sunday, is that Adam and Eve were tempted out of a perfect environment, out of perfection. But yet, what did they do? When Satan came and tempted them in what they had and the things that God had given them, they should have never desired anything else. But yet obviously they did. Because God said, don't you eat of that tree. But what does that do? It's like telling a child, don't you do that. They desire all of a sudden to do those things that we tell them not to do. We're the same way. We desire to do the things that God tells us not to do. Don't eat too much when you go out there. Don't eat this sugar. Don't eat the things that you know is gonna put all this weight on you. But we desire those things. We have a taste for it. Well, you see that here. Is that, but yet here Christ is. He was led by Satan, but he had no taste for sin. He did not sin, even though his flesh was hungry, so you can see that there. You can see the weakness in his flesh. He hungered, he was hungry. But you know, I was gonna say it a minute ago, one of the things that we do, if we have to skip a meal for some reason, it's like us, sometimes if we're traveling, we may not eat lunch till we find a place to eat. And when you find a place to eat, most of the time we say we're starving to death, We don't even know what hunger is, you know, to be honest. I don't really remember a day that I have ever gone without eating. If I did, it was because I went somewhere, fishing or somewhere, and didn't have anything to eat, which is very seldom. But we say that, but yet Christ went 40 days and he was tempted. So this tells us that this temptation was a great temptation. It was not just a small temptation. It was a great temptation. It was a temptation that I don't think any of us could even live through, but Christ did. Now, we can't explain that. But one of the things that men say against the word of God is there's no way Anybody could live through this. Well, Satan was giving it all he had here. He came at Christ at his weakest point, and he will come at us in our weakest point whenever we think. And see, that's another thing that the Lord reveals through his word of us, is we're prideful people. I said that in Sunday school this morning, and there's always a time that pride overcomes us if we're not careful. And we have to be careful of those things. And I'm going to stop right there and next week begin there on Sunday morning about the temptation of Christ and the things of this. But we have to realize too that Christ was victorious over his temptations. And not only was he victorious, but in these temptations he defeated Satan completely. So we have the one that we can lean on who has defeated Satan. And if you notice in verse 11 there in that chapter, you see that the devil left him. And it says the angels came and ministered to him. Now think about this, and this is one of the things that James Snowden said, and I'm getting a little ahead here. But in the very beginning, in the end of this, the beginning and the end, one of the things that's very important here is that in the end, the angels came and ministered unto him. Now that's kind of a confusing statement, but why did the angels come and minister to him? And Snowden said this, he said it's because he refused to exert any of his power in any of this temptation, because if he would have exerted any of his power, it would have been sin. See, he had the ability to turn those stones to bread, He had the ability to make it through all these other temptations, but he did not exert his power, because if he would have, it would have been sin. He would have been giving in to Satan, and then he would have been under the Satan's rule. But we know, being the son of God, he did not. Let's pray.